Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Maxime Bernier On The Census Long Form

Bernier churlishly added that critics - municipalities, academics, and other "special interest" groups can damn well pay for the research, studies and data they need.

You don't get this stuff for free. If you are in Toronto, and want the tract level data from the census, it costs you $180. That's about half of what it used to cost me to buy the big three volume set, but it looks like they don't give it to you in paper anymore (I may be wrong; its been awhile since I had to worry about this stuff). For Vancouver its $115. And etc.

Of course, if you're a marketer and you want sub-tract-level data, you're talking quite a bit more $$$, but it allows you to determine, for example, income down to postal code and perhaps below. So if you have a postal code divided into a couple of streets filled with rich folk, and a couple of streets filled with poor folk, and you have a product you want to market to rich folk, data from the long form tells you which streets you have to send your junk mail to, and which streets you can ignore. This results in less costs for the marketer plus less junk mail overall.

Hence: screw with the long form = more junk mail, because the marketer can no longer distinguish the rich from the poor folk, and winds up sending his crap to both.